It's been
difficult to pin an ideological tail on the nascent Bush
White House. One day the president is called a staunch
conservative for nominating John D. Ashcroft to run the
Justice Department and acting to restrict U.S. funding to
overseas groups that support abortions. The next he's
labeled a bleeding heart for helping prisoners' children and
promoting literacy programs.

The problem,
some Bush advisers and friends say, is that conventional
political definitions do not adequately explain what the
president is trying to do. His actions have less to do with
the left vs. right, they say, than with his embrace of many
of the ideas contained in the movement known as
"communitarianism," which places the importance of
society ahead of the unfettered rights of the
individual.

"This is the
ultimate Third Way," said Don Eberly, an adviser in the Bush
White House, using a favorite phrase of President Bill
Clinton, who also sought, largely unsuccessfully, to
redefine the debate with an alternative to the
liberal-conservative conflict. "The debate in this town the
last eight years was how to forge a compromise on the role
of the state and the market. This is a new way to rethink
social policy: a major reigniting of interest in the social
sector."

"Communitarianism,"
or "civil society" thinking (the two have similar meanings)
has many interpretations, but at its center is a notion that
years of celebrating individual freedom have weakened the
bonds of community and that the rights of the individual
must be balanced against the interests of society as a
whole. Inherent in the philosophy is a return to values
and morality, which, the school of thought believes, can
best be fostered by community organizations. "We need to
connect with one another. We've got to move a little more in
the direction of community in the balance between community
and the individual," said Robert D. Putnam of Harvard
University, a leading communitarian thinker.

Many of Bush's
early proposals fit this approach. This week, Bush moved to
make it easier for the government to fund religious groups
that cater to the poor and disadvantaged. He also gave a
boost to AmeriCorps, the national service program that sends
volunteers to help community initiatives. Last week, Bush
rolled out an education plan that gave localities more
authority over their schools. A week earlier, he spoke of
the need for character education in schools. Even his tax
plan, due next week, has what are touted as
community-building elements: a new charitable tax credit, a
charitable deduction for those who don't itemize, and a
reduction of the marriage penalty.

Bush's
inaugural address, said George Washington University
professor Amitai Etzioni, a communitarian thinker,
"was a communitarian text," full of words like "civility,"
"responsibility" and "community." That's no accident: Bush's
advisers consulted on the speech with Putnam. At the same
time, Bush has recruited some of the leading thinkers of the
"civil society," or "communitarian," movements to his White
House: former Indianapolis mayor Stephen Goldsmith,
University of Pennsylvania professor John DiIulio,
fatherhood advocate Eberly, speechwriters Michael Gerson and
Peter Wehner. Even Lawrence B. Lindsey, long before becoming
Bush's economics adviser, was a Federal Reserve governor who
explored ways to lure capital to rebuild poor urban
communities.

"It all hangs
together," said Goldsmith, this week assigned by Bush to
help lead AmeriCorps and the new community-building effort.
Might the civil society or communitarian label be the
element that ties Bush's polices together? "I don't think
it's reading too much into it," Goldsmith said. "This is the
president, this is what animates him."

Some of Bush's
ideas are objectionable to civil liberties advocates and
strict constitutionalists on the left and the right, but
they have broad support in both parties. Exhibit A was the
appearance Tuesday of Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) at
a Bush event touting his "faith-based" efforts. "The new
president has some promising instincts and there are some
promising examples," said William Galston, a communitarian
thinker at the University of Maryland who served as a
Clinton policy adviser. Though Bush is inconsistent, Galston
said, "the president, in moving in this direction, is
building on one of the defining features of American
society. It's potential common ground for a much wider swath
of American society."

But Galston
and other communitarians say Bush's fealty to communitarian
thinking is inconsistent. While he espouses a range of
community-building policies, his $ 1.6 trillion tax cut is,
at its core, a libertarian idea: give people back their
money to limit government, they point out. At the same time,
they add, his choice of Gale A. Norton to head the Interior
Department and Spencer Abraham to be energy secretary
reflects libertarian thinking: they both favor deregulated
environmental and land policy.

Other
communitarians wonder whether Bush's community-minded words
are mere drapery, and they suspect top Bush strategist Karl
Rove, who introduced Bush to the thinking, sees it merely as
a tactic to please religious conservatives. Rove declines to
discuss the subject. Other communitarians say they fear
Bush, who believes in changing individual "hearts" through
religious salvation, is more concerned with legislating
religion than instilling community values.

Still, said
Putnam, "this administration is doing some somewhat
surprising things," particularly Bush's shot in the arm for
AmeriCorps. Putnam held a series of seminars on
communitarianism, attended at times by Goldsmith, DiIulio,
and the Rev. Kirbyjohn Caldwell, a Bush friend.

Bush's
education plan would give local communities more power to
create charter schools and set up their own education
systems, as long as they meet performance standards. Bush
has also called for a range of new programs: mentoring for
the children of prisoners, prerelease rehabilitation
programs in prisons, maternity group homes, and access to
after-school and literacy programs for poor children. In
addition to a new charitable tax credit and expanded
deduction, Bush is seeking to induce corporations, through
tax incentives and a "compassion capital fund," to pay for
more charitable programs. His "faith-based initiative" would
allow religious charities to receive government funds
without giving up their religious teachings.

Bush is also
preparing an initiative to promote fathers' responsibilities
to their children. While he hasn't promised significant
funding to his new Office of Faith-based and Community
Initiatives, Goldsmith, DiIulio and Eberly believe they have
a broad mandate. "There's a specific mission, but there's a
broader effort of social-sector renewal writ large," Eberly
said. "This is about the incubation of democratic values and
habits."

Even more
libertarian elements of Bush's program, such as individual
retirement accounts and tax credits for health care, have a
communitarian element, Goldsmith argued, because they
require individuals to be responsible for themselves and
their families.

Communitarians
say Bush has yet to embrace some of their other favorite
ideas: workplace flexibility to allow employees more time
with families and communities, limits on urban sprawl,
campaign finance reform, and having the wealthy pay more for
certain government benefits. Still, Bush is mulling over
another favorite of communitarians. Aides say he is weighing
a levy like the "e-rate" charge on phone bills to get
schools wired to the Internet. They say Bush believes such
funds could build not just physical but civic
infrastructures for communities, funding programs that bring
neighbors together or promote civics education.

There is still
no such thing as a card-carrying communitarian, and
therefore no consensus on policies. Some, such as DiIulio
and outside Bush adviser Marvin Olasky, favor religious
solutions for communities, while others, like Etzioni and
Galston, prefer secular approaches. But both sides believe
Bush is nudging the White House in a more communitarian,
civil-society direction.

"It is very
likely to make a positive contribution," Galston said of
Bush's efforts. Olasky concurs. Bush has moved Republicans
away from believing that individuals are "lone atoms" apart
from community, Olasky said. "He is a civil society
guy."